[SOLVED] Sound volume is too low!

lucmove · 12-29-2010, 12:25 PM

I installed Mint on a separate partition to try it, and my biggest complaint so far is sound. Everything works well, even Skype, but the volume is too low! It's low on Skype, MP3 music, Flash (Youtube), everything. I checked the volume on Kmix and dragged it all the way to the top, it was about 80% and I tweaked it to 100%, but it's still low. I also ran alsamixer, all the volume controls were at 100% already. Is there anything else I can do?

teckk · 12-29-2010, 05:34 PM

Do you have all of the volumes up like pcm, igain, ogain

Code:

$ mixer
Mixer vol      is currently set to 100:100
Mixer pcm      is currently set to  45:45
Mixer line     is currently set to   0:0
Mixer mic      is currently set to 100:100
Mixer cd       is currently set to  75:75
Mixer rec      is currently set to  79:79
Mixer igain    is currently set to  89:89
Mixer ogain    is currently set to 100:100
Mixer line1    is currently set to   0:0
Mixer phin     is currently set to   0:0
Mixer phout    is currently set to   0:0
Recording source: vol

lucmove · 12-29-2010, 06:22 PM

Code:

luc@mint ~ $ mixer
The program 'mixer' is currently not installed.  You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install csound-utils
luc@mint ~ $ sudo apt-get install csound-utils
[sudo] password for luc: 
Reading package lists... Done
etc.

Code:

luc@mint ~ $ mixer
PortAudio real-time audio module for Csound
PortMIDI real time MIDI plugin for Csound
virtual_keyboard real time MIDI plugin for Csound
util mixer:
Usage:  mixer [-flags] soundfile [-flags] soundfile ...
Legal flags are:
-o fnam sound output filename
-A      create an AIFF format output soundfile
-W      create a WAV format output soundfile
-h      no header on output soundfile
-8      8-bit unsigned_char sound samples
-c      8-bit signed_char sound samples
-8      8-bit unsigned_char sound samples
-a      alaw sound samples
-u      ulaw sound samples
-s      short_int sound samples
-l      long_int sound samples
-f      float sound samples
-R      continually rewrite header while writing soundfile (WAV/AIFF)
-H#     print a heartbeat style 1, 2 or 3 at each soundfile write
-N      notify (ring the bell) when score or miditrack is done
-F fpnum        amount to scale amplitude for next input
-F fname        file of a scale table for next input
-S integer      sample number at which to insert file
-T fpnum        time at which to insert file
-1 -2 -3 -4     include named channel
-^ n m  include channel n and output as channel m
-v      verbose mode for debugging
-- fname        Log output to file
flag defaults: mixer -s -otest -F 1.0 -S 0
mixer: error: Insufficient arguments

Code:

luc@mint ~ $ mixer /usr/share/sounds/k3b_success1.wav 
PortAudio real-time audio module for Csound
PortMIDI real time MIDI plugin for Csound
virtual_keyboard real time MIDI plugin for Csound
util mixer:
audio sr = 8000, monaural
opening WAV infile /usr/share/sounds/k3b_success1.wav
mixing 46613 sample frames (5.8 secs)
writing 65536-byte blks of unsigned bytes to test.wav (WAV)
Max val 32512 at index 2918 (time 0.3648, chan 0) 1 times
Min val -24064 at index 874 (time 0.1092, chan 0) 1 times
Max scale factor = 1.008

alsamixer shows everything at 100%.

lucmove · 01-02-2011, 03:57 PM

It seems to be a KDE 4 problem. Sound got a lot better after I installed Trinity/KDE 3.5. The Kmixer app even had a lot more options/devices/channels for my sound card.

KDE 4 sucks so bad it even messes up with sound support. As if sound support in Linux needed any more trouble...

Marking thread as SOLVED.